Lawyers for the state hit back this week amid an ongoing legal battle between the state and its teachers over public school funding.
In a new filing to the Wyoming Supreme Court, the state said the idea that Wyoming schools are underfunded is "detached from reality."
"This appeal represents yet another chapter in the seemingly endless cycle of litigation over the constitutionality of school funding in Wyoming," the filing argues. "The Wyoming legislature has adjusted the current model over the years to improve efficiency and more closely reflect cost estimates. Unhappy with these choices, school districts and their allies again resort to legal action, filing suit to force further adjustments and compel more spending."
The Wyoming Education Association, which represents teachers, sued the state in 2022, arguing it had chronically and unconstitutionally underfunded public schools.
Laramie County District Court Judge Peter Froelicher agreed, handing the teachers a sweeping victory in late February. The ruling ordered state lawmakers to better fund teacher salaries and to provide more money for mental health counselors, student laptops, student nutrition and the replacement of aging school facilities, among other priorities.
That ruling is already influencing lawmakers' discussions about recalibration, the process every five years of reevaluating the state's funding model. A draft update to that model will likely be discussed by a legislative committee in October.
But the state is hoping to see the district court’s ruling overturned. It has appealed the case to the Wyoming Supreme Court.
In the 106-page brief filed July 24, state lawyers argued Wyoming schools are both successful and adequately funded. The state refutes the lower court's ruling by outlining Wyoming's high per-student education spending and its efforts to tie the size of each school district's block grant to market indicators.
"The suggestion that Wyoming is somehow shortchanging or harming students through inadequate funding is a premise detached from reality," the brief alleges. "For decades, the legislature has provided funding more than sufficient to provide an equal and high-quality education for all students. Operational spending for Wyoming schools consistently ranks among the best in the nation. Expenditures vastly outpace every peer state in the region — in some instances by nearly twice as much per student each year. The idea that districts cannot educate children at this level of funding defies reason."
Wyoming spends about $20,000 per student, according to the Education Data Initiative, more than any state it borders and more than twice as much as Idaho or Utah.
State lawyers are asking the Wyoming Supreme Court to re-affirm the legislature's control over school funding.
"Where courts are addressing disparities to ensure fairness in the allocation of school funding, they exercise the broadest authority," the brief states. "But questions of overall adequacy and the need for new or additional spending involve subjective judgments and reasonable differences of opinion that demand more restraint. On these issues, the good faith efforts of elected lawmakers should be reviewed with deference and a presumption of constitutional validity."
The education association has until early September to respond.
